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{Lit.}
Migrating Inside
The soul pilgrims of Lome Moore's short stories
Birds of America
by Lonie Moore
Alfred A. Knopf, 1998
291 pp.; 523
University of Madison-Wisconsin professor Lorrie Moore’s
characters all seem so displaced. They’re like some late 20th-
century group of migrants, whose movements aren’t depen
dent on the seasons so much as random occurrences and
everyday objects — a house, a game of charades, a cat, a trip
or a terribly unhealthy relationship. Like her previous works,
Self Help and W'fto Will Run the Frog Hospital, Moore’s latest
collection of short stories, Birds of America, deals with
themes of rejection, bitterness and the extreme and often
lonely circumstances that bring people together. Her wit is
honed to a brutal chainsaw' sharpness, and her characters
often have the ironic ability to see straight through the very
situations in which they allow themselves to become tangled.
As a collection of short stories. Birds is almost deceptive,
giving you just enough within the first story to leave an
impression that Lorrie Moore
and her characters are sim
ply depressives who have
given in to the desolation of
mid-life. That first piece,
“Willing,” features Sidra, a
failed B-grade Hollywood
actress who makes a home of
a cheap hotel room in
Chicago. The fact that Walter,
the mechanic she gets
involved with, has absolutely
no idea who she is inside,
divides them emotionally as
the story plunges toward its
conclusion.
The collection becomes at
once a bit less bleak and
more layered emotionally as
one reads on. “Which is More
Than I Can Say About Some
People’’ appears to be about
a mother and daughter’s trip
through Ireland in the wake
of the daughter’s separation
from her husband. The seemingly sure-footed mother eventu
ally shows the insecurity hidden underneath her blanket of
confidence when she has to bend over in ritual and faith to
kiss the Blarney Stone.
“Agnes of Iowa” reveals a woman with a life as plain, flat
and dictated by predictable features as the state in which she
lives. Her humduim existence is jostled when she dispenses
with the set curriculum at her school and has a fleeting,
romantically suggestive moment or two with a visiting poet.
Possibly the most hilarious and conversationally brilliant
piece in the collection is “What You Want To Do Fine." A
pathetic, divorced, sloppy and usually straight house painter
with a lawsuit on his hands has a ramshackle, itinerant affair
with his lawyer, a blind man named Quilty. The strength of
their feelings for one another is tested when they begin to
question the need for their constant moving around.
“Real Estate" finds Ruth, a recovered cancer patient cheat
ed on to the point of idiocy by a husband she won’t leave,
having every imaginable ordeal hurled at her until, frazzled,
she is forced to do more them accept the life that has worn
her down. Ruth’s best friend, Carla, provides reckless assur
ance and a hilariously thrown-together philosophy of life. It is
also the story of Noel, a man dumped by his wife for not
appreciating music. He takes a psychopathic turn, forcing
innocent people to sing popular tunes before falling them.
The thread that ties all of Moore’s characters together is
their painstaking struggle to re-obtain something tangible
that has unfairly been removed from their lives. It’s an
uncomfortable read, provoking laughter, followed by grim
silence as you ponder what exactly there is to laugh about.
Bruce Miller
Lorrie Moore
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